High Time
by seh28
Summary: This is a little dabble about that one time Harvey and Jessica smoked in her office. When Harvey said "that night" in High Noon, it was a bit vague so the timing is incredibly arbitrary. This is about a random night in the past where they were celebrating and certain things happened. Clearly I have a Harvey/Jessica impediment and need help. Hope you enjoy, don't forget to review!


Jessica wasn't certain of how this had even happened. She wasn't sure how they had arrived at the particular place. She watched Harvey rather surreptitiously because her attention was divided between the task he was completing, and the view of the quiet and dimly lit halls of the firm. Of her firm. A firm that she had complete and total reign over. She didn't need to feel like she was sneaking around doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing. But for some reason, the feelings she was currently experiencing resembled that level of worry present when you don't want to get caught. Sometimes floor to ceiling glass doors were such a burden. Especially when trying to celebrate winning a top tier case medicinally.

"You drank way too much champagne to be looking as anxious as you do right now," Harvey voice cascaded into her ears and interrupted her thoughts. Jessica's eyes met his and she saw an amused look there, his eyes purposefully provoking her, his fingers still fumbling over what he was handling.

"Well you clearly drank more champagne than you should have, because it's taking you ten years to finish rolling that thing." Jessica retorted pointedly, squaring her shoulders. "Seems you aren't an expert at everything after all."

"The only thing that I'm not an expert at is being mediocre," Harvey assured her flippantly, as his fingers roll over the joint paper, properly securing the last bit of its contents. "And bowling, but that's only because it's silly and beneath me."

Jessica rolled her eyes dismissively at his comment and walked the length of her office. The soft carpet massaged the balls of her bare feet. She had rid herself of her 4 inch heels much earlier in the night. If she remembered correctly her deep purple stilettos where somewhere between the couch and the desk. The champagne buzz she had been nursing for the past hour after a very lengthy celebration, including various partners and even associates, had diminished only slightly. It was late and they were the last two remaining. Jessica wasn't even positive what had possessed her to go along with the bright idea that Harvey had posed about indulging in this specific extra curricular activity. Now that he had finished rolling the joint, she felt even more doubt.

"Would you relax?" Harvey teased emphatically, reaching into his pants pocket for his lighter. "Everyone left, no one is here. Your secret's safe with me."

"You don't know that no one is here." Jessica stated matter of factly, as she glanced again towards the hall.

"It's 1:45 in the morning." Harvey offered evenly as he flicked his wrist over to glance at his watch, as he deliberately played with the lighter between his fingers.

"You and I both know that means nothing. We've both stayed here all night on numerous occasions because the situation called for it."

"But that isn't the case tonight much to my delight," Harvey exclaimed, as he sighed. This reaction she was having wasn't surprising, he was shocked that she had even agreed to this in the first place. He had suggested it, on a whim. More so just to see the look on her face, but he wished he could have seen his own when she had agreed. "What do you care anyways? Your name is on the door. Scratch that, your name is on, not only this door, but the entire building. You can do whatever you want and always make it a habit of doing so."

Jessica knew he was right, she knew she was overreacting, and what was a little weed between mentor and mentee? Especially after the amount of work that Harvey had put into the case he had just successfully demolished. He was a regular legal star as of late and this was just the nail in the coffin. She didn't have to rain on this parade. Plus, she hadn't smoked in forever and it always had done wonders to relax her in the past.

"Come over here." Jessica instructed him as she walked past her coffee table and stopped at the edge of her couch, her hand resting on the back of it. She knelt down neatly and looked over at him to see if he had gotten up from his place seated languidly in a chair across the room.

"Are you being serious?" Harvey questioned, the level of incredulity present in his voice was extreme.

"Yes, humor me." Jessica replied as she sat on the floor, back against the couch, disappearing from his view.

"You're lucky I'm not prone to wrinkled clothing." Harvey lamented as he rose from his seat and took the steps toward where Jessica was seated behind the couch. He sank down into the floor next to her.

"Humility just might find you one day Harvey Specter." Jessica bemused out loud, more as a joke than anything else, as she crossed her ankles and folded her legs beside her at the knees.

"Who do you think taught me to be so self assured?" Harvey proclaimed as he stuck the joint in between his lips, and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Nuh uh. Nice try. You can't blame your otherwise overwhelming arrogance on me." Jessica objected as she angled herself towards him just slightly. It was only then that she realized how closely he had sat next to her. Sometimes they had this irrevocable aversion to each others personal space. Usually when the business pretenses were renounced, their level of familiarity unconsciously took over.

Harvey flicked the lighter and lit the end of the joint. Jessica assessed him briefly before letting her eyes settle on his hands. She wondered if he had a retort for what she had just uttered, she felt certain that he probably did. He always had something else to say. Harvey took a lengthy hit of the joint, more so to insure that it was lit evenly then to show off. He took it from his mouth once he felt his lungs fill up. He fixed his lips and let the smoke out easily and effortlessly.

"You're just as arrogant as I am," Harvey said directly his gaze meeting hers, as he passed it to her. Jessica took it from him carefully with her two fingers, their hands brushing lightly.

Jessica squinted her eyes just slightly at him before shifting her focus on inhaling once she placed the joint to her lips. Jessica breathed in as she took a hit, feeling the smoke burn the back of her throat almost harshly. She blew the smoke out swiftly because she could feel her lungs constricting as if she needed to cough. The cough came just as the last of the smoke exited her lips. Jessica felt Harvey's hand suddenly on her back, rubbing it gently.

"Breathe through your nose," Harvey recommended lightly. "Coughing just enhances your high."

"Well aren't you the expert?" Jessica expelled as she tried to regulate her breathing. She felt a bit light headed already but she figured it was just from her coughing fit. She suddenly became hyper aware of his hand. It probably didn't help that the black dress she had on had a low slinging back, which meant there wasn't fabric separating his hand and her skin.

"I'm glad you're finally willing to admit it." Harvey responded almost indignantly, removing his hand from her back and taking the joint from her hand. He took a long drag and held it in his lungs for several seconds. Harvey could feel her eyes on him but he didn't look at her. He finally blew the smoke from his mouth and passed it back to her.

"I don't agree with what you said." Jessica began, her mind seemed to be jumping from here to there. It had apparently decided to settle on the last ten minutes of their interaction.

"You regularly agreeing with me would be a novel occurrence, wouldn't you say?" Harvey questioned, as he leaned further into the back of the couch, he felt his shoulder dropping as his body relaxed. His head was starting to swim a bit. His high was creeping up on him.

"Don't be a smart ass." Jessica retorted.

"Well it's literally impossible for me to be a dumb ass, so..." Harvey replied, his eyes watching her movement. His gaze found the slope of her shoulder and her neck, the light curl of the ends of her dark hair against her skin, the dangling antique looking earring hanging from her earlobe and finally her mouth as she brought the joint to her lips. Harvey could feel the weed causing him to put her under a microscope and he knew that he should stop. His eyes left her deliberately and settled on the window pane not far away.

"You really think I'm arrogant?" Jessica posed, looking at him as she took another hit from the joint.

"You don't really care what I think do you?" Harvey wondered aloud. They were breaching personal territory and it always got a bit dicey and uncertainty seemed to run the gamut.

"Not all the time no, because sometimes your perception tends to be a bit one dimensional. You to need widen your inferences." Jessica responded thoughtfully, she suddenly felt like she was over thinking, and thus over answering. "But maybe you were speaking rhetorically."

"You're impossible to please," Harvey exclaimed as he rolled his eyes, taking the joint from her and consuming a lengthy hit, holding it in and then purposefully blowing it in her direction.

"Not true, I'm very pleased with the outcome of today," Jessica praised loosely. "I'm speaking generally though, most people could use some more refining."

"Except for you," Harvey corrected knowingly. "If you got any more refined you'd cut glass."

"Pfft," Jessica objected instantly, dismissing the implication of her unreachable demeanor. Some accused her of being stoic and inaccessible but she didn't feel that she was. Her personality and her disposition were all crafted over years of her assessing what traits were most effective and cultivating them. If anything, Jessica Pearson felt she was incredibly self aware.

"I'm serious. It's largely tied to that arrogance you swear you don't possess." Harvey elaborated.

"I am not arrogant." Jessica exclaimed. She didn't now why the word was so bothersome to her. She was many, many different things but arrogant was not one of them. Not according to her.

"You are, it's different though. It's a quiet arrogance, it isn't boastful like mine," Harvey said gently. "Among other things, it lends itself to your grace and fortitude."

"That was really nice," Jessica remarked after a moment of letting his words settle over the space. She was confounded that he had offered them. Usually he wasn't one for really genuine, heart felt praise. She thought momentarily that she was only so affected by his words because she was clearly high and her head was in outer space.

"It's the truth," Harvey said nonchalantly as he shrugged his shoulders. He almost couldn't believe he had given her such a personal compliment. Harvey eyed the joint that he was holding in between his fingers and noticed traces of her lipstick. He experienced this strange sensation that he struggled to name but he chalked it up to the THC. He took another hit from the diminishing joint in an effort to form a wall between his feelings, his prior words and her ears.

"I haven't smoked in so long," Jessica changed the subject as she watched him, she could feel him strangely retreating into himself. "Did you get this stuff off the street?"

"Where else would I get drugs, Jessica?" Harvey questioned as his mouth broke into a smirk. He was suddenly incredibly amused by her question and the look on her face. The inquisitive look in her eyes and the way her eyebrows knitted together was so unnecessarily serious.

"I don't know, a doctor?" Jessica quipped back, half joking. Her face giving way to a smile of her own.

Before either one of them knew it they were both laughing uproariously. Jessica knew she hadn't really said anything outlandishly funny. It was definitely the weed working. She stopped laughing first but caught herself studying him as he tried to contain his own laughter. Her eyes swept over his hands and bare forearms, then rested on his rolled up sleeves, and bright cufflinks that she had gotten him last Christmas caught the light. His suit jacket was strewn somewhere in her office, on the back of one of her chairs, probably next to her shoes. The signature lines by his eyes seemed so prominent and even more endearing than usual. The simple fact that she seemed so fixated on them and his teeth and the beauty marks on his face told her she was higher than she had initially realized. She could tell because she felt a little bit outside of her body.

"If I tell you something will you react appropriately and not throw it in my face at a later date?" Jessica wondered aloud as she watched him gather himself from his seemingly endless case of the giggles.

"That sounds vaguely serious," Harvey countered taking a deep breath. "I'm too high for serious."

"It's really not," Jessica maintained, still eyeing him. "But maybe it's best if I keep it to myself anyway. You probably won't handle it correctly."

"You aren't in charge of how I react to things Jessica Pearson." Harvey leveled with her seriously.

"You're right. I'm not. God knows you're your own person," Jessica said almost regretfully.

"If not my own, who's would you have me be?" Harvey wondered aloud, his eyes finding hers with keen precision.

Their eye contact held and the undeniable force behind that question and his delivery of it was not lost on either of them. Jessica suddenly felt sure that she was breathing incorrectly. There was something about the direct nature of the question and his unwavering eyes that gave her a light fluttering in the pit of her stomach. She was almost certain that she could hear his heartbeat, or maybe it was her own pounding in her ears.

Jessica broke their eye contact finally and shifted her positioning gingerly in an effort to get up and dispel the palpability of their current situation. But even with the care she took, she was a bit unsteady. She put a hand on his shoulder to balance herself as she began to move, if she had thought more critically about her movement she would have angled herself away from him instead of towards him. The ends of her hair swayed forward sweeping the smell of her perfume into his nose. Harvey's eyes never left her as his hand instinctively clasped onto her wrist, further steadying the hand on his shoulder. Jessica knew she should just stand up and walk away but something about the pressure of his fingers on the pulse point of her wrist and the gravity of his gaze made her eyes fall back on his and she instantly felt physically unable to move.

"Where are you going?" Harvey asked lightly. Jessica didn't immediately respond, she was without the capacity to move or speak or think. The silence expanded throughout the room as their gazes dueled one another. She felt certain that he could feel how rapidly her heart was beating.

"I'm thirsty," Jessica managed as she somehow found the will to stand upright. Harvey let go of her wrist as she stepped over his outstretched legs.

Jessica let out a huge breathe as she walked towards the table in search of the champagne bottle and glasses. If she was being completely honest with herself that moment had most certainly rattled her. This wasn't the first time she'd had to disengage a potentially powerful moment between the two of them. She wondered how it had gotten to be this way between them. This unspoken connection that had started running deeper than it ever had in the beginning years. It seemed the more Harvey excelled and grew in the firm, the more their relationship and dynamics evolved, the more they became incomprehensible.

It wasn't purposeful, at least not on her part. She already had enough to deal with. Jessica knew with a sense of utmost certainty that the closeness and the feelings she sometimes could not decipher were best carefully wrapped up inside of her. He was already a bit of a weakness, she couldn't afford for him to become a debilitating one. It probably didn't help that she was currently intoxicated out of her mind.

"You have cotton mouth," Harvey's voice, coming from behind the couch where he was still seated, shook her out of her thoughts.

"I should be having tea but I don't have the concentration to make it right now," Jessica explained as she walked back to where he was seated, stepping over his legs again and handing him a glass.

Jessica sat down, noticeably farther away then she had been seated before. Harvey took note of it immediately. He drank from the glass she had handed him, the cold liquid quenching his dry mouth. His eyes shifted towards her momentarily, she looked to be somewhere deep in thought. That was the thing about being high, your thoughts were often much more encompassing. Sometimes intensely so.

Harvey replayed the moment she had gotten up over in his head once more. All the details were so sharp: how her body hovered, the way she smelled, the look in her eyes, how delicate her wrist felt against his fingers. The more he thought about it the more he thought that maybe smoking with her had been a bad idea. It was almost laughable to him that they were sitting there, on the floor of this enigmatic, prestigious woman's office and these were the thoughts that were bouncing around in his brain.

Jessica Pearson had become so many different things to Harvey over the years. He had experienced an array of different feelings concerning her since they first met. He'd went from being enamored with her, fearing her, dreading her, reveling her, disliking her, protecting her, arguing with her, being enormously indebted to her and everything in between. As he was sitting there stoned out of his mind in that moment, all he could think about was this profound almost aching need for her. A big part of him wanted to extinguish it. The very prospect of him acting on it was frightening. He wondered how much of these thoughts were just magnified by the marijuana. Maybe quite a bit. Harvey glanced back over at her and she seemed to still be in deep perpetual thought.

"What are you thinking about?" Harvey asked suddenly.

"What I'm going to wear tomorrow," Jessica answered back after a beat. "Or rather today."

"Somehow I doubt that," Harvey muttered under his breath. Jessica heard him and instantly thought, rather irrationally, that he somehow could read her mind and he knew that she was lying. Clearly the weed was doing all of her reasoning. "What were you going to tell me earlier?"

"Earlier?" Jessica questioned, momentarily unsure of what he was talking about.

"Yeah, you said you wanted to tell me something but you never did," Harvey clarified. "Remember earlier when I said you couldn't manage my reactions."

"I remember," Jessica admitted, her gaze had been fixated on the window pane and what she could see of the skyline from her position on the floor, but she looked over at him now.

"Well what was it?" Harvey questioned, studying her intently.

"I was going to tell you that I was proud of you," Jessica explained softly. "That you've really turned into this magnificent attorney and even sometimes person and it fills me with enormous pride."

Harvey wasn't sure if his face gave him away but hearing her say that was like getting validation from the one person in the world whom it would mean the most coming from. That was who she was. She was kind of everything to him. She was his best friend.

"And how did you think I would react to hearing that?" Harvey managed, crossing his arms and angling his body towards hers. She was still a bit too far away to reach out and touch.

"I don't know," Jessica admitted, meeting his eyes. "You might have said something snarky or equally diminishing, something involving your inflating ego. Plus, we both know how difficult the words thank you can be for you."

"Wow, you have so much faith in me." Harvey responded, the hurt in his voice was hard to miss. Jessica could even see it in his eyes. She knew he was probably being uncharacteristically affected by the truth in her words because he was high.

"All I've ever had is faith in you and you know it," Jessica reasoned. "I just happen to know you, that's all."

"Yeah, you do know me," Harvey whispered. His head leaned against the back of the couch, tilting just slightly as if he was thinking about something of heavy consequence, his eyes never leaving hers. Jessica felt the energy in the room shift once more, but this time she didn't have a way to dispel it, she didn't know if she could even if she tried.

"It took some time," Jessica admitted, as she cleared her throat. "You're not an easy person to get to know."

"Come here," Harvey requested evenly, the steadiness of his voice coupled with his words was almost enough to make her oblige him. But she couldn't. She knew what he was asking and she just couldn't bring herself to do it. Even if a large percentage of herself really wanted to.

Jessica managed a small shake of her head. But nothing came out of her mouth, no verbal objection. She couldn't even bear to tear her eyes away from his. She wanted to look at him for as long as possible, even though it almost pained her in the process.

Harvey felt a boldness that he hadn't ever experienced in relation to her. He figured what the hell? What was she going to do? Reprimand him? Take him off a case? Not talk to him for a couple of days? He thought that maybe those consequences would be worth it. Worth it just to see. He closed the space between them as he scooted towards her slowly. The deliberate nature of his actions made the anticipation in what was obviously forthcoming agonizing for the both of them.

There were a thousand different thoughts careening through Jessica's mind. She should stop him. She should say something. She should, at the very least, look away but she couldn't. She was physically unable to halt or disrupt what was impending. There wasn't anything that she could do. There was no stopping this moment from unraveling, no matter how much she knew that it could potentially be disastrous. Harvey's eyes left hers with a haunting brevity as he absorbed all the angles of her face. His hand reached out and touched her neck, this thumb resting lightly on her chin. Everything was so heightened and happening so tremendously slow that Jessica felt as if she might pass out.

"Don't slap me," Harvey stated gently, bridging the gap between their mouths.

He halted mere centimeters away from her lips, letting the moment fully crescendo, he needed her to want it as badly as he did. Harvey brushed his lips against hers lightly but not fully committing to a kiss. Jessica felt her breath hitch in the back of her throat from the mere contact of his lips on hers. She reached both of her hands up and rested them in the crooks of his elbows. Harvey kissed the side of her mouth sweetly, then proceeded to drag his lips across hers, kissing her more firmly.

Jessica felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, she could no longer be a passive participant in what was happening. Her hands traveled up his arms and clutched his shoulders, bringing him closer. His other hand went into her hair, while the fingers on her neck lay there almost expertly. Harvey deepened the kiss, seemingly obliging Jessica's no longer hidden need. Jessica sighed into his mouth as the pace of the kiss quickened, both positive that it was the other person battling desperately for control over the exchange. Harvey's tongue ran against the inside of her lip skillfully, making her knees threathen to give way and she wasn't even standing. Her fingertips were clutching his collar and clawing at the back of his neck. Hearing him moan somehow swiftly snapped her back into reality.

"Harvey..." Jessica managed to utter against his mouth. "We can't."

Harvey kissed her with renewed vigor, changing angles on her mouth, promptly silencing her protest. Her hands were simultaneously trying to pull him closer with urgency and half-heartedly trying to push him away. They had somehow become deliciously tangled up in one another. Jessica had ended up in his lap, which was beyond problematic.

"We have to stop," Jessica muttered into his prying mouth.

"Why?" Harvey asked simply, adorning her chin and jaw with small kisses.

"Because," Jessica breathed, trying to regain any sense of self control that had completely escaped her.

"Because isn't a substaintial enough reason," Harvey asserted breathlessly, as he paused his onslaught and pulled back to look at her, his thumb resting in the soft dip at the bottom of her throat.

"Well it'll have to do because it's all I can come up with at the moment," Jessica responded, finding it impossible to look at him, as she tried to come to grips with what had just taken place.

Harvey didn't speak as they both tried to regain their breath that the other person had taken away with such authority. Jessica let go of his collar and slid off of his lap, still unable to make eye contact with him as her mind started whirling a mile a minute.

"Oh my God," Jessica whispered as the full weight of what had just transpired lay squarely on her shoulders. She brought her hand to her mouth; she could still taste him.

"I just had to know," Harvey muttered, part of him thought that she would start screaming at him any minute. Though they had untangled themselves, their shoulders were still touching and he could still feel the intensity of her body heat.

"You had to know what, Harvey?" Jessica questioned abruptly.

Jessica was trying to figure out where to go from there. She was almost physically shaking because of how out of hand that had almost gotten and if his kissing skills were any indication of his other physical skills, she was thanking and cursing her lucky stars that she had stopped them. Just a few more seconds and she wouldn't have been able to unring that bell, hell she already couldn't as it was.

"What it was like to kiss you," Harvey responded simply, looking over at her briefly before forcing his eyes elsewhere.

"We'll just forget it," Jessica said, completely bypassing his admission. She ran her hands through her hair and straighted her dress. "We had too much to drink, we were smoking: it happens."

"Oh, please..." Harvey exclaimed bitterly. "Are you really going to blame what just happened on substances?"

"Yes, I absolutely am."

"Fine, whatever." Harvey let out as he started to get up. Without even thinking she reached out to stop him, but caught herself before her hand latched onto his arm though they both saw it. Harvey's eyes bore into hers before she dropped her gaze. "If you want to act like we haven't been dancing around this for at least the last two years then that's on you."

"This can't ever happen again," Jessica explained gently, trying to get through to him without looking him in the face. "Our relationship is already too complicated."

"Well you're right about that," Harvey breathed as he finally did get up and walked around the couch, she followed closely behind but was careful to leave enough space in between them. Harvey turned around to face her and caught her gaze. "I'm almost positive that the complexity of our relationship was the reason why we were almost tearing each other's clothes off just now."

"I can assure you that would only complicate it further," Jessica reasoned softly, trying to diffuse the already exasperated situation.

"Maybe it wouldn't," Harvey countered recklessly. "Maybe it would completely simplify it."

"I promise you that wouldn't be the case."

"How do you know that?" Harvey wondered thoughtfully, his eyes unflinching and direct.

"I just do," Jessica replied lamely. "I don't think I can explain it in a way that you'd understand."

"Well try," Harvey urged her. His reaction to this made Jessica oddly frantic. He was asking too many questions and he seemed almost desperate for the answers. Almost like he was hanging on her every word, the way that he used to do in the beginning.

"We can't have this too. You and I are many things to each other," Jessica offered calmly, looking around her office for some sense of consistency and comfort, because the way he was in that moment coupled with how intoxicated she was plus what had just happened between them was beyond unnerving. "We can't be this too."

"When's the last time you had casual sex," Harvey questioned almost without thinking, the word casual sounded strange coming from his mouth in reference to her but it was the only thing that he could think of. Part of him hoped she wouldn't answer the question, he didn't really want to know the answer at all: he had said it more for effect.

"That's none of your business," Jessica qipped back, her head tilting and her hands going on her hips. She wanted to be done with this conversation but he seemed too immersed in it. "I make it a habit not to have casual sex with people I have emotional connections with. That, as a general rule, tends to eliminate the casual nature."

"So you admit you have an emotional connection with me," Harvey gently assessed as he took a step toward her. Jessica hadn't expected him to do that, the physical distance between them had been helping lessen some of the intense energy in the room.

"Of course I do, don't be so dense and male," Jessica retorted, she put up a hand almost instinctively as a barrier between them. He stopped enroaching on her space when her hand almost made contact with his stomach. "It's not the same for you though, is it? After all you're emotionally stunted."

"Ouch," Harvey said lightly, even though he probably did deserve that. "Don't make generalizations about my emotional capacity."

"I'm not," Jessica assured him, she wanted to take a step away from him but knew she couldn't. He wasn't going to outwill her. Even while high and drunk she had to retain her position of power. Even in this uncharted territory. "Those are your words, not mine."

Harvey stood silently, thinking about what she was saying and the intrinsic truth ladden deep within. He thought about how he currently felt, how he had felt in the past and how increasingly conflicting those feelings had become in recent years, and how they were a thousand times worse in that moment. He didn't have an adequate proposition for what should happen next, he knew that she knew him too well, and that there was only so much he could feasibly handle. So he'd just have to withstand it. He'd just have to swallow his pride, his discomfort and his jealousy when other men looked at her, spoke to her, tried to get close to her. He'd just have to store it deep in his gut. He didn't feel that he could offer her what she deserved, and apparently neither did she.

Harvey realized he needed her too much to hurt her, and he felt certain that would eventually be the case because that was always what happened with women he became intimate with. Even though he knew that it could be different with her, there were too many other variables to consider. Deep down, he knew that she could hurt him too, just because of who she was to him. She was already the most important person in his orbit, and that prospect scared him to his bones. So no, he knew that they couldn't really do this. Not now anyways, because there was no way to ever truly go back.

"We're going to forget this ever happened," Jessica explained evenly, searching his eyes for a sign of comprehension or protest.

"I won't forget," Harvey breathed as he took a step back. "And neither will you."

"This can never happen again," Jessica countered, she was starting to lose her patience and her wits, she suddenly felt exhausted.

"You're the boss," Harvey nodded absentmindedly, an almost undetectable hint of sadness in his voice. "Whatever you say."

"Harvey," Jessica offered lightly, for what reason, she didn't know: to soothe him, to pacify him, she wasn't sure. She didn't have anything else to say.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Harvey muttered, taking an almost unconscious step forward and kissing her on the cheek. Before Jessica could even exhale properly, he had grabbed his suit jacket and walked out of the door.

Jessica couldn't help but feel like she had just avoided a cataclysmic event, while still coming too close to it to come away completely unscathed. What was going to happen now? Because she knew that he had been right about one thing, neither one of them would forget it. But maybe they could just bury it, bury it really deep so that it wouldn't resurface for awhile. Because what else could she do now? She couldn't unring the bell.


End file.
